Rapid establishment of interpreting skill and knowledge standards for public school sign language interpreters has created a virtual mandate for their immediate, time-compressed, professionalization. A series of federal laws requiring accessibility to communication for deaf people have escalated demand for interpreters far beyond the supply. Thousands of people with varying levels of knowledge, skill, and experience, have been drawn into service in schools without professional preparation. Responding to specialized research, evaluation, technology, and education related to educational interpreting, states have quickly been establishing standards for interpreting skill and knowledge including phased in degree requirements. Educational interpreters have had to find ways of gaining necessary skill and knowledge rapidly, even though they typically work full-time, in isolation, and have little ready access to resources. Few occupations have experienced a juggernaut-like transition of this nature, leaving insufficient information to understand and address the phenomenon. This study was designed to investigate what we can learn from adults absorbing intense pressure of elevating their education and skills unfolding on a daily basis, most of whom are already experiencing "high-demand low-control" work environments. The findings give voice to members of a field of practice at a historic point in the professionalization of their field: sixty five experienced educational interpreters with diverse foundational preparation who completed a specialized, two-year, inservice program delivered at a distance. Online survey research, using a variety of response formats complemented by open-ended questions, generated data which were analyzed using descriptive and analytic statistics as well as coding schemes for themes and patterns that emerged from the qualitative data. The study illuminated a variety of challenges, successes, and, for some, the transformative nature of the experience, which warrants further study. Beyond acquiring knowledge and skills participants learned how to learn and achieved self-realization of their resilience points. They especially experienced themselves transforming into professionals with abilities to actively contribute to the school environment, reporting themselves to be informed, competent, and confident in all typically expected roles. Challenges typical of the adult distance learner abounded. It is recommended that adult learning principles be incorporated into any such program design, and that the wider interpreting community of practice be expanded as a learning resource. Equally important to recognize are the many people who have the same enthusiasms for the work, and the same professionalizing experiences as their more skilled peers, but who may never become sufficiently skilled to pass interpreting skill exams or their state standards. A follow up study is recommended to learn what emerges next. Is there a place for them in education that fully acknowledges and uses their experience and competencies? / Ph. D.

This study was a program evaluation of an American Sign Language internship program that was established in 2006 at a 4-year private college in the Midwestern United States but had never been evaluated. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the effectiveness of this internship program in preparing students for employment in the field of interpreting. An expertise-oriented program evaluation case study was conducted using the lens of experiential learning theory. Research questions were used to investigate the strengths and weaknesses of the program and the ways in which the policies, objectives, and assignments prepare students to work as interns and later as professional interpreters. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 2 former administrators who helped establish the program, 13 graduates of the program between 2013 and 2015, and 8 of the internship site directors who worked with interns between 2013 and 2015. The interview data were coded and analyzed following Merriam's approach to identify themes, and document review was used to support the themes. Key findings were that the program provided effective training for interns transitioning to professional employment, but students tended to lack self-confidence in their performances Interviewees also indicated that program documents were helpful but difficult to use, and mentors needed guidance in giving constructive feedback. An evaluation report was constructed as a research project deliverable to provide specific recommendations for program enhancement. The study promotes positive social change by providing stakeholders with the evidence-based data needed to implement further growth for the internship program, and to more effectively train interpreters to work with the Deaf community.

Appropriate digital citizenship skills are considered essential for modern professionals, including signed language interpreters. However, little is known about the experiences and practices of interpreter educators regarding digital citizenship. This exploratory qualitative interview study was conducted to examine the experiences and practices of interpreter educators related to incorporating opportunities for digital citizenship skill-building in their teaching practice. A conceptual framework based on digital citizenship theory guided development of this study. Data were collected from interviews of 6 interpreter educators in bachelor-degree programs in American Sign Language/English interpreting across the United States. Data sets were analyzed through open and axial coding and assessed for themes and patterns. Findings of the study indicated that interpreter educators were aware of elements of digital citizenship but were not knowledgeable about institutional or other policies, that they prioritized the soft skills of digital citizenship, and that they assumed their students acquired the technical skills of digital citizenship elsewhere. Findings may lead to better informed pedagogical decisions about incorporating digital citizenship into instruction, better prepared new professionals, and can contribute to positive social change for practitioners and the consumers they serve.

在過去幾十年，口譯研究已有長足的進展，也出現了許多關於口譯產出裡停頓與暫停方面的研究。但是在口譯產出的改口與重說部份的研究則沒有什麼著墨。 本研究之目的為分析四組口譯員產出內的改口 (此論文對改口的定義主要是指譯者對於自己譯語的訂正) 與重說現象。研究裡的四組口譯員分別為就讀法輔仁大學跨文化研究所中英口筆譯碩士班的一年級與二年級學生(各四位)、四位擁有一至三年經驗的新手職業譯者以及四位有八年以上經驗的老手職業譯者。 本研究所使用的語料為參與本研究的譯者所產出的64段同步口譯片段 (中進英以及英進中各有32段)。每位譯者的產出均依照原文切割成同等數目的段落。研究分析的段落為有三至四位一年級同學發生改口或重說現象的段落。本研究的主要目的為找出這些出現改口與重說現象的段落裡是否有共同的現象或問題，並把學生的段落與新/老手譯者的段落互相作比較，最後提出一些口譯教學與訓練方面的建議，希望能夠讓學生能以較快與較順利的方式讓自己的產出往老手口譯員的方向邁進。 本研究的主要發現如下: 1. 學生口譯員出現改口與重說現象的段落裡出現的常見現象包括文法錯誤 (時態、單複數等)、在段落裡一些地方出現問題 (這些地方包括特定動詞、語意模糊的句子等)。在某些段落也有觀察到譯者出現認知負荷過重的現象，主要的原因是原文的速度以及訊息密度。 學生口譯員以及新手職業譯者之間的改口與重說出現次數有一點差異，而新手職業口譯員以及老手職業口譯員之間則出現顯著的差異。 2. 從四組譯者遲疑與暫停的發生次數規律來看，可以觀察到職業譯者能以一致的認知模式處理特定語篇，而學生譯員在特定語篇的處理上，並無特定的產出模式。 3.重說與改口是理解口譯信息產出困難的重要指標。其中透露出口譯的詞語產出與非詞語產出等具體困難，同時也提供了有關構詞、句組、時態等語言型態的信息，可供譯員及口譯教學參考。 4.就重說與改口的表現而言，從學生到職業譯者的過程中可看出階梯式的進步。 / In the past few decades, there have been many studies on interpretation and also quite a number of studies that focuses on studying the pauses and hesitations (also known as filled pauses) in the output of interpreters. However, there have been few studies on the repetitions and corrections in interpretation output. This study aims to analyze the repetitions and corrections in the output of four groups of interpreters. These four groups are each composed of four first-year and four second-year students studying in the Master’s Program for Translation and Interpretation at the Graduate Institute of Cross-Cultural Studies at Fu-Jen University as well as four interpreters with 1-3 years of experience (the new interpreters) and four with over 8 years of experience (the experienced interpreters). The corpus used in this study is composed of 64 pieces of simultaneous interpretation output (32 Chinese to English and 32 English to Chinese) that was done by the sixteen participating interpreters. The output for each interpreter was divided into equal amount of segments according to the source text, and segments that saw three or all four of the first-year students commit either a repetition or correction were chosen for analysis. The goal of the analysis was to find issues or patterns in the output that coincided with the repetitions/corrections, compare the students’ output with those of the new/experienced interpreters and provide suggestions on how the teaching and training of interpreters might be adjusted to make the development of student interpreters and faster and smoother process. The major findings were as follows: 1. Some common themes tied to repetitions and corrections include grammatical mistakes (ex. errors in tense or plurals) trouble at certain points within the segments, for example areas with unclear meanings or certain verbs. There were cognitive overload in certain segments, which mostly had to do with the speed and the density of information in the segments. There were small differences in the amount of repetitions and corrections between the student groups and the new interpreters, and a significant different in the number of repetitions and corrections between the new and experienced interpreters. 2. Looking at the patterns for the pauses and hesitations committed by the four groups of interpreters, we can observe that the professional interpreter groups share a common cognitive methodology in dealing with different source texts, while the student interpreters showed no discernable output strategy for the source texts. 3. Repetitions and corrections are important indicators in understand the difficulties in interpretation output. Analysis of the repetitions and corrections showed the verbal and non-verbal output difficulties encountered by the interpreters and also provided information on the morphology, sentence structure, tense and other linguistic aspects of interpretations output that can serve as a reference for interpreters and interpretation educators. 4. There was a step-by-step improvement going from the student to professional interpreter groups in terms of the number of repetitions and corrections committed. / able of Contents Acknowledgements.......................................I Table of Contents............................ .........II-III Abstract (English)………….....……………………………………......……..…...IV-V Abstract (Chinese).....................................VI Chapter 1: Introduction…………………………………………..…....……..1 1.1:Preface………………………......……...…………………………..………….1 1.2: Research Motive………………………………………….........…..1 1.3: Research Background and Goals……………………..……….3 1.4: Thesis Layout…………………………………….…………………..……...…5 Chapter 2: Literature Review……………………………………………………...............................................................................7 2.1 The Process of Simultaneous Interpretation………….....………………..............................................................…...7 2.2: Factors that Affect the Output in Simultaneous Interpretation……......................................................…....9 2.2.1: Factors that Influence Simultaneous Interpretation and Which Occur Within the Source Text………………………………………………………….…...9 2.2.2: External Factors that Influence the Interpretation…………........................................................….….…12 2.3: Issues and Skills Within Simultaneous Interpretation.......…….......................................................………..13 2.3.1: Issues in Simultaneous Interpretation..................................................................................14 2.3.2: Skills Utilized by Interpreters in Simultaneous Interpretation.........................................................15 2.4: Differences between Students, New and Experienced Interpreters...........................................................18 2.5: Studies on Pauses and Hesitations in Interpretation Output...............................................................29 2.6: Interpreter Training and Development.....................................................................................35 Chapter 3: Research Methodology...............................................................................................40 3.1: The Participants of this Study and Those of Past Studies.................................................................41 3.2: Software Used in Corpus Analysis.........................................................................................42 3.3: The Corpus and Samples of Corpus Analysis................................................................................46 Chapter 4: Analysis of Selected Corpus Segments: First and Second Year Students......................................................................................................................54 4.1: Chinese to English Analysis..............................................................................................54 4.2: English to Chinese Analysis..............................................................................................73 Chapter 5: Comparing the Student’s Output with those of New and Experienced Interpreters..................................................................................................................86 5.1: Chinese to English segments comparison...................................................................................86 5.2: English to Chinese segments comparison................................................................................103 Chapter 6: Analysis Results and Conclusions..................................................................................121 6.1: Summary of Analysis and Conclusion......................................................................................121 6.2: Limitations of Study and Possible Directions for Future Research........................................................125 References...................................................................................................................127 List of Figures Figure 1: Pause duration used by the studies on pauses cited in this study...................................................30 Figure 2: Screen view of an interpreter’s output audio file in Audacity......................................................42 Figure 3: Audacity screenshot No.2...........................................................................................43 Figure 4: Audacity screenshot No.3...........................................................................................43 Figure 5: Audacity screenshot No.4...........................................................................................44 Figure 6: Audacity screenshot No.5...........................................................................................44 Figure 7: Audacity screenshot No.6...........................................................................................45 Figure 8: Issues and number of correct interpretations by the two student interpreter groups in segments 1-10...........................................................................................................................72 Figure 9: Issues and number of correct interpretations by the two student interpreter groups in segments 11-14.......................................................................81 Figure 10: Pauses/hesitations/repetitions/corrections committed by the student interpreters.................................................................................................................84 Figure 11: Issues and number of correct interpretations by the two professional interpreter groups in segments 1-10..........................................................................................................................103 Figure 12: Issues and number of correct interpretations by the two professional interpreter groups in segments 11-14..........................................................................................................................110 Figure 13: Grammatical errors committed by the interpreters.................................................................112 Figure 14: Number of pauses and hesitations committed by the interpreters in this study.......................................................................................................................114 Figure 15: Pauses and hesitations committed by the interpreters in this study. Parts where the number of pauses is higher are marked with a dark pink background, while the parts with a higher hesitation number have a gray background..................................................................115-116 Figure 16: Number of repetitions and corrections committed by the interpreters in this study...................................................................................................................116-117

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